The right to bear arms or the right to arm bears...

: : : See my reply to your post. If unemployment is caused by deliberate engineering of the economy (i.e. *not* laissez faire) via the federal reserve as a supposedly 'liberal' economist called Galbraith believes then he would find unlikely agreement with 'separation of state and economy' libertarians.

: Separation of the state and wealthy capitalists is a pipe dream, Gee.

SDF: I have been arguing for months on this BBS that "eliminating the State" would simply make government into a commodity available to the highest bidder, without much of a response. I guess it's too true to be worth debating. BTW, if one wants to see what life in a commodified government is like, there's always Russia -- any book on Russian crime, say "The wild East : crime and lawlessness in post-communist Russia / Victor M. Sergeyev," will reveal this. Andor and Summers' MARKET FAILURE claimed that the Russian economy was 40% controlled by protection rackets -- I have to wonder if that's 40% of the Russian economy, or a 40% take on 100% of the Russian economy. Everyone has to pay for some sort of protection service, and "competition" between different protection services only increases "effective demand" for protection, which serves as both offense and defense of course...

: Why not abolish the state, as Borg would advocate, and simply let the capitalists who want to invest in risky overseas endeavors buy their own vast military machines to protect their overseas holdings?

SDF: Gee apparently imagines that some sort of gentlemen's agreement to renounce the use of force will solve this problem, that the poor in their slums will agree to peacefully starve to death while pretending they have the "opportunity" to become millionaires through the profitable investment of coins they find in the gutter combined with the coins that are thrown at them for sweeping the streets, etc.